Want to shoot like a Navy SEAL?

Total beginner gets gun lesson from SEAL expert

Retired Navy SEAL Chris Sajnog of San Diego gives a lesson to U-T San Diego military reporter Jen Steele. He teaches the basics using the Airsoft version of a Glock 17 before introducing real bullets.
Alex Fuller — U-T

Retired Navy SEAL Chris Sajnog of San Diego gives a lesson to U-T San Diego military reporter Jen Steele. He teaches the basics using the Airsoft version of a Glock 17 before introducing real bullets.
/ U-T

I’ll never be a Navy SEAL. They aren’t taking 41-year-old women with no firearms experience.

But Sajnog just published a book called “How to Shoot Like a Navy SEAL.”

The 43-year-old San Diego resident runs Center Mass Group, a company that offers gun training at the hands of former Navy SEALs. Personally, he has taught FBI, CIA and Homeland Security personnel the finer points of weapons handling.

Sajnog says even beginners can benefit from the know-how he gained on SEAL Team 2 and a stretch as a sniper instructor.

“I spend all my time training military and law enforcement. Just talking to a lot of civilians, they wanted the same training that I don’t have time to provide. So I figured I’d put it on paper,” says Sajnog (pronounced sigh-nog.)

Since Osama bin Laden’s May 2011 death, publishers have let loose a deluge of books that promise to teach us to shoot, think and survive like the elite special-operations fighters who took him out.

Now, imagine getting a personal shooting lesson from Sajnog, who despite retiring in 2009 is still built like an oak tree.

Can an absolute beginner -- a landlubber who flinches at gunfire -- come out a little more SEAL-like?

Let’s see.

Crouch. Lean forward, lean forward, lean forward, like the quarterback is about to yell “hike.” Sajnog teaches an athletic version of practice shooting.

It’s good for combat, or real life. “Anytime you’re not on a range, your enemy is probably moving, so you need to move, too,” said the former chief petty officer.

Being in the Navy, SEALs also practice shooting from a bobbing ship. “A stance that’s just straight and erect – when the ship starts rolling, it’s going to be hard. You need to go with the flow.”

It’s not that easy.

“You ever play sports?” he asked, with polite incredulity when I repeatedly couldn’t get the alignment right.

Our targets were only three yards away. While that sounds wimpy, Sajnog pointed out that most gunfights – unless you are a sniper in the mountains of Afghanistan – occur with only 3 to 7 yards separating the shooters.

“Even 10 yards would be a far shot. So being able to shoot accurately in a good, aggressive fighting stance is really what we’re looking at,” he said.

We were in his backyard, shooting white plastic pellets from an Airsoft gun. Before that, we started in his garage — a place where he said good marksmen devote hours of target practice without live ammunition.

After 20 years in uniform, he’ll still rehearse drawing the weapon from a holster, reloading, shooting and moving, working with multiple targets, even using a laser target to check his sighting.

I learned how to load dummy bullets into a magazine, and insert it in the butt of Sajnog’s Glock 35.